Coke’s Ed Potter Reflects on 33 Years at the ILO Conference

Earlier this year, Coca-Cola Director of Global Workplace Rights Ed Potter attended his 33rd and final ILO Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, more than any other American business representative. Here he is (second from right) at the 2000 U.S. ILO Conference with fellow delegates Charles Spring,
U.S. Department of Labour; Bob Hagan, U.S.
Department of State; and Jerry Zellhoefer,
AFL-CIO. (titles at the time of photo). Click the dots to see more photos.

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Ed Potter delivers his first speech at the ILO Conference in 1983.

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1988: Signing of the first U.S.-ratified labor standards in 30 years.

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Negotiating an ILO Treaty.

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63 Years of U.S. Business ILO
Delegates (titles at the time of photo): James Burge,
former Corporate Vice President of the Motorola Corporation, U.S. Employer
Delegate, 1992; Thomas B.
Morehead, former Vice President, Human Resources, Carter-Wallace, Inc., U.S.
Employer Delegate, 1993-199; Charles H. Smith,
Jr., former chairman of Cleveland-based Sifco Industries, U.S. Employer
Delegate, 1951, 1956, 1965 to 1975, 1980 to 1991; Ed Potter, Employer Delegate, 1997 to 2014.

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1999 Palais de Nations Peace Room After President Clinton's Presentation to the ILO Plenary (titles at time of photo): Juan Somavía, Director-General of the International Labour Organization; Thomas "Tom" Harkin, United States Senator; Alexis Herman, United States Secretary of Labor; President Bill Clinton; Ed Potter; Andrew J. Samet, Deputy Under Secretary for International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB); Gene Sperling, National Economic Adviser to President Clinton; John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO; Sandra Feldman, President of the American Federation of Teachers; U.S. Ambassador to Geneva; Madeleine Albright, United States Secretary of State.

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Ed Potter at the 2004 ILO Employer Meeting with Ronnie Goldberg, USCIB Executive Vice President for Policy (title at
the time of photo).

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2005: ILO Applications Committee Plenary Debate.

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2014 ILO Conference, Forced Labor Committee

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2014: Ed Potter and the Employer Group applaud the adoption of the Forced Labor Protocol.

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Ed Potter and Ron Oswald, General Secretary of the IUF, at Potter's farewell dinner.

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Ed Potter and Guy Ryder,
Director General of the ILO, at
Potter's farewell dinner.

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Ed Potter and Daniel Funes de Rioja, President
of the 2014 ILO Conference.

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Ed Potter has spent nearly half his life representing U.S.
businesses at the annual International Labor Organization (ILO) Conference. Earlier this year, Coke’s director of global workplace rights attended his 33rd
and final ILO Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, more than any other American
business representative.

Potter’s unparalleled leadership at the conference – and the
relationships he has brokered and nurtured along the way – have had a positive impact
on the global landscape of international labor standards and positioned Coca-Cola
at the forefront of the human and workplace rights conversation.

Formed in 1919, the ILO is the oldest United Nations (UN) agency.
As the only tripartite UN agency, all ILO actions require engagement by
government, employer and worker representatives. Its primary goal is to promote
opportunities for and men women to obtain decent and productive work, in
conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity.

“Democracy is a messy process,” Potter said during a recent
interview, “and the ILO is the personification of democracy.”

The ILO Conference is the supreme legislature of the ILO. It
negotiates and adopts international labor standards on topics such as freedom
of association, labor inspection, child labor and nondiscrimination, which are
then ratified and implemented by member states and become law. Potter calls the
month-long gathering the “most complex collective bargaining table” he’s ever
seen.

“I’ve been really fortunate to impact the direction of ILO
standards and how they are applied,” he added. “My hope is that the implementation
of labor and workplace rights standards, in some small way, is better because
of my role at the ILO.”

Potter’s extensive background in international labor,
workplace rights and employment law has enabled him to hold several leadership
roles at the ILO Conference. In 1997, he became head of the U.S. Employer
Delegation and, in 1998, was the employer spokesman that negotiated the 1998
Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which serves as one
of the bases for the UN Global Compact and The Coca-Cola Company’s Human Rights
Policies.

“What Ed brought to the ILO, above all else, was an
unchanging and unalterable commitment to the ILO’s values of social justice and
fundamental rights,” said Guy Ryder, ILO Director-General. “That commitment has
been all the more powerful for being delivered in understated rather than
rhetorical style, calmly rather than in anger, and on all occasions rather than
merely when convenient. For all these reasons, all those who have known and
worked with Ed at the ILO can and will look back on his 33 years of
contribution to our Organization and conclude, to paraphrase the bard, that
“this was a man… of principle.” Read Ryder’s
full tribute to Potter.

From 2004 to 2011, Potter was the employer spokesman on the
ILO’s Committee on Application of Standards that holds countries accountable
for their international legal obligations resulting from ratification of ILO
treaties. In 2014, he was the employer spokesman that negotiated the ILO
Forced Labor Protocol and Recommendation that brings a 1930 forced labor
standard into the 21st Century by addressing human trafficking that
results in forced labor and implementation gaps found in the 1930 treaty.

“Ed is a contributor,” saidBrent Wilton, secretary-general
for the International Organization of Employers (IOE), a group Potter
represented on hundreds of cases before the Committee of Application of
Standards. “He is a negotiator, a strategist, a legal drafter and a person that
looked to take forward the interests of the employers while at the same time
being steadfast in his support for the values of tripartism and dialogue.
Thirty-three consecutive years of participating in the work of the ILO is not a
record we will see many repeat.”

Potter has witnessed -- and helped steward -- a lot of change
over his three-plus decades of involvement with the ILO. His first conference
in 1982 was characterized by the verbal missiles of the Cold War and committees
addressing apartheid and the participation of communist countries in the ILO.

“It was a slower, more opaque time,” he recalled. “No Internet,
no laptop computers, connectivity via hard-wired phones and incredibly slow
faxes. A lot has changed.”

Potter practiced law for 26 years before joining Coca-Cola in
2005. During his tenure at Coke, he has led the development of the company’s
first Human Rights Statement and Workplace Rights Policy, initiated an annual
human rights conference and launched a global Workplace Rights development
program that brings leading experts from business, government and civil society
to Atlanta. In addition, under his leadership, more than 16,000 workplace
assessments have been conducted in our Company, system and supply chain. About
1,300,000 workers have benefited by improved practices driven by our
implementation of our Workplace Rights Policy and Supplier Guiding Principles.

“Over the past nine years, Ed has played a key leadership
role in the development and implementation of our human rights policies, as
well as our due diligence and remediation processes to ensure that we are
respecting human rights across our business and supply chain," said Coca-Cola Chairman and
CEO Muhtar Kent. "He has led collaborative efforts with a variety of
stakeholders across the Golden Triangle of business, government and civil
society, and his many leadership roles at the ILO have been well aligned with
the values and engagement efforts of our company.”

According to Ceree Eberly, The Coca-Cola Company’s Chief
People Officer, the global Coca-Cola system and supply chain has benefitted
from Potter’s expertise and counsel.

“Ed has applied a consistent formula in every challenging
situation, including his focus on human rights, insightful analyses, thoughtful communication skills, a humble
heart and an overarching desire to do the right thing,” she says. “His legacy
of collaboration on numerous tripartite labor standards, declarations, human
rights policies, stakeholder relationships, and mentorship of many will have a
lasting impact and continue to improve the lives of workers everywhere.”

In 2005, Coca-Cola established a global working relationship
with The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant,
Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF), which represents the
largest number of unionized system employees.

"The Coca-Cola Company and the IUF had begun an
unprecedented process of engagement to allow the IUF to raise and resolve our
human rights concerns, notably rights at work, with the company in the context
of its own workforce, as well as those working throughout the Coca-Cola
system,” explains Ron Oswald, general secretary, IUF. “Ed led the company's
team in a principled and pioneering way as we advanced this process. Since
then, his leadership of the corporate team has always been built on a candid
and a good faith approach... he has always said what he meant and meant what he
said. While we may not have always shared common views or positions over these
past nine years, we have always had the utmost respect for the way Ed has
brought a level of personal integrity to this process.”

Last month, the U.S. Council for International Business
honored Potter’s 33 years of ILO service with a special dinner in Geneva.

“It’s a humbling validation of my work with the ILO,” Potter
says. “I’ve left the conference every year feeling proud of the fact that, in
some small way, we helped improve the lives of workers somewhere in the world.”

Potter, who will retire from The Coca-Cola Company on June 1, 2015, feels the same way about the work of his global workplace rights team. He
says he sees the conclusion of his career as the “end of the beginning.”

Respect for human rights within the global business community
is maturing, he explains, and The Coca-Cola Company is leading the way.

“Coca-Cola has been a path maker,” he says. “We are now
sought after as a company to learn from, based on our tools and framework for
respecting human rights. Everyone at Coca-Cola can feel very good every day because
we’re solving problems and improving workplace conditions across the business
system and our supply chain.”